Things the Crickets Know
by ThePlotHolesMadeMeDoIt
Summary: Most spouses have to worry about their in-law's approval of them. But in this case, it's Spock who doesn't quite approve of Winona. or Where Winona hasn't been Mom of the past twenty-eight years, Spock quite explicitly defends Jim's honor and there is some cuddling. Also character reflection. Established relationship, some outside POV, bonded, married
1. Things the Crickets Know

AN: So first Star Trek fic *Gives three cheers* *receives irritated crickets* (well would you look at that I referenced my own story. How decidedly not witty). I'm a fan of all things space husbands and I'm working in a TOS fic write now if you're interested. But seriously, TOS Jim is so much harder to write jeesh (I love him to bits though. Old married Spirk has been and shall always be my OTP)

Anyways.

So I may have made some characters go on some possibly wee bit OC rants, and I played upon Reboot Jim's insecurities a little but here me out. I was inspired by kyliselle's take on Jim (if you're out there, you are sort of kind of extremely awesome by the way) which at first struck me as imbalanced and then I proceeded to fall in love with it, and the deleted scene from the 2009 movie(any trekie should see that, I really wish it was included in the movie) where Sam runs away. Also I really wanted to do my own take on Jim's past and Winona after reading so many.

So hope you lovely nerdy lot enjoy!

Oh and unbetad, all mistakes are mine, feel free to point them out.

* * *

Things Crickets Know

"May I join you?"

Spock turns, yellow light from the porch curving around the back of his head in rings.

"I would not find it objectionable."

The shuffle of slippers on crinkled wood rises over the purr of crickets and Winona Kirk slides down to sit beside him.

"Nice night," she says, leaning against the post on the other side of the steps as she tucks her knees into the old wool of her bathrobe, "Trouble sleeping?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Spock can see her bottom lip is trapped under her front teeth and her frown lines are deep with a question that isn't the one she just asked.

"I am able to sleep should I chose to do so. I merely sought to listen to the crickets. Their sound is not unlike that of a similar insect native to Vulcan. The species was annihilated in the destruction of the planet and to hear it again is most agreeable."

He doesn't look at her as he speaks, eyes focused on the flashes silver that catch on the wheat stalks as they sway like a silent tide in the breeze. A firefly hums by them in a loop and a cow snuffles in the distance.

"You don't like me do you?"

The bluntness reminds him of Jim, and the slightest hint of a smile tweaks the corners of his eyes. He continues to stare stonily ahead, knowing the reaction to her words would be invisible to all but his bondmate.

"You have caused me no offense and you are Jim's mother."

Her tired eyes narrow and her fingers drop from where they were threading through a loose grey chunk in her blond hair.

"But you don't like me. I've met a fair share of Vulcans in my day, and I know when my question's being dogged."

Spock twists towards her under the blanket clasped around his shoulders. His angled eyebrows lower in thought as he searches the creases of her face.

"It is not…It is not so much that I do not like you. I find you to be over all an amiable woman, and you share some of the personality traits that I favor in your son. Any rudeness you may have detective is only a somewhat illogical resentment I have towards you that stems from my protectiveness of Jim."

Winona is blinks; the hollows under her once plumb cheekbones thickening as she opens and closes her mouth. Spock watches her, features still and waiting, save the flurried pulse, calm for him, that bounces in the green blood beneath his skin.

She brings a thin wrist to her face, bending it behind her ear with the stand of hair she had been playing with.

"Resentment? What does that have to do with…Why? Why do you resent me Spock?"

At this Spock's face softens. His lips hint upwards as he turns a tassel on his blanket evenly in his hands.

"Your son has become as essential to me as oxygen, and I mean that in a way that is less poetic than it is fact. He is a remarkable man, braver than any I have ever known and with compassion that amazes me not only in its illogicalness but also in its unrelenting purity. He is wildly intelligent, with a complex mind that called to me before we were so much as friends. If I were to list all the things I love about James Kirk, we would have to remain here for approximately 4.3 hours, assuming that is I would not come up with more during the duration of my speaking, which is unlikely."

Spock pauses, looking up from the threads now folded neatly in his palm. His stare presses into her and as he meets her eyes, she feels as though he's not looking at the wrinkles that frame her lids, or the weaves of green in her pale irises but at all the faults she's stowed in them.

"But behind all of it," he continues, "Jim is acutely insecure. He is called cocky by many, but is the opposite. He pretends well, but he lacks confidence, refuses to see his own brilliance, refuses to see even his own significance at times. His astounding selflessness comes from his kindness, but also his disregard to his own safety. Of his inhibitions, the one that saddens me most his inability to trust those close to him. He is petrified if he loves someone, they will leave him, that he does not deserve the affection he is worthy of ten fold. And his presumptions is his early life had been well founded the father he never had who's shadow marked his life, Sam running away, the abusive step father that he endured, his trauma on Tarsus IV…."

The softness is his eyes hardens and a suggestion of a shadow forms in the patch of skin where his eyebrows meet in what must be the Vulcan equivalent of a glare.

"…And perhaps most importantly, by you, the mother that was always leaving and was absent in spirit on her rare returns to her children. So I resent you because as much as he trusts me now, his doubts are still prevalent: he will not ask for help, for what he wants, for comfort, for what he needs. He still sometimes tests me to see if I will abandon him. Though I have become adept at analyzing his actions for the things he will not say, were we not bonded, I would not always know when this fear presented itself and he is need of reassurance. I can see his memories when we meld, and the absolute loneliness he has felt, the loneliness he fears he will feel again, pains me unimaginably. I resent you because my T'hy'la suffers and _you_ are one of the reasons for it."

There is shock splashed heavily about her now, and her eyes bloom away from their sockets. Wrinkles melt back into her face as her jaw slackens and her skin stretches.

"You," she starts, standing so fast the soured cream cloth of the bathrobe flies up like the wings of a fleeing bird, "You- how dare you accuse me of! This is my house, he is my son-I"

Her wild eyes find Spock's.

Her fingers freeze their clawing path on her scalp, her heaving breaths straining the satin of her nightgown on her freckled chest. Winona's eyelids slip closed, lashes sinking to meet the sweeps of purple skin below. Her body sinks too, fast to the step again, spine clicking carelessly on the railing. Her lungs choke with gasps of tears and she clasps a weathered hand over her mouth.

The crickets sing in time to her cries.

Spock is at a loss for action. He knows that humans like physical contact when they're distressed. When Jim cries the heart Spock often pretends he doesn't have breaks, and he acts purely on instinct, burring the man in his arms and kissing the crown of his head until he calms.

Spock reasons this would not be the appropriate course of action to comfort Jim's mother.

He settles for a hand on the wool that cloaks the knob of her knee. A minutes passes, another firefly swirling by with beeping sparks. It chases a friend to the grass, and Spock thinks oddly of wildfires.

Winona sniffs and takes a rippling breath, shoulders slumping as she breathes out with a sigh.

"You're right Spock. You're right. I wasn't there for him as a kid, too wrapped up in my own grief for George care for my own son. Not even after Tarsus, when he needed me most. I took a week's shore leave then went back to my starship and left him with Frank. How that kid survived…. I have no idea. You've got to understand looking at him is like looking at a photo of George; they're so similar it scares me. I know it's no excuse for the things I did."

She scrapes the hem of her sleeve on the underside of her nose and smiles sadly.

"I'm proud of him. I've got no right to be but Spock, he's a great man. A damn great man."

Spock nods, lifting the black line of one of his eyebrows.

"Perhaps you should tell him that."

She chuckles, a rusty sound, and pats Spock's hands on her knee. He feels through the dry palm the sincerity in what she's spoken.

"Maybe I should. Thank you Spock, for everything. I'm really glad he has you."

"As the Terran saying goes, 'the pleasure is mine,' Commander."

She laughs again, easier this time. Crows feet Spock hadn't noticed before are stamped into the grin.

"Please, you're my son-in-law and you've just seen me ball my eyes out. Call me Winona."

Spock says nothing but the crickets smile for him.

…^-^…

Jim wakes up because it's cold

This is unusual since he sleeps engulfed by a cuddly (though Spock would deny that one under threat of death) Vulcan furnace, and most of the time when he wakes up at...

He finds the glow of the red dashes on the clock.

...at _2:31_ in the fucking morning it's because he was already up anyways, had a nightmare, there was a red alert, he really had to piss, or, Jim's personal favorite, Spock was really horny.

He paws at the sheets beside him only to find them absent of their green-blooded primary heat source. A sigh is greets the empty room as he shivers then rolls onto his back with a thud that rocks him against the mattress.

The crickets sound like laughter. They're likely laughing at him, but he counts the chirps anyways. He'd missed their clinking chatter in the silence of space.

10,11,12,13...

He squeezes his eyes closed then snaps them open. They're a startling blue, even trapped in a square of moonlight that climbs from the window, brushes across his bare chest and curves around his jaw.

The clock now reads 2:33 and the crickets are definitely laughing at him.

He shoots a hard breath out his bottom lip that puffs his cheeks and ruffles his eyebrows and the tuffs of blond hair fallen on his forehead. He's being ridiculous and he knows it. They've been bonded for almost two years now. _Spock's not going to care if I want to go find him. It is a billion different kinds of irrational to even _be_ afraid that he's taken the next shuttlecraft out of Iowa because he's not in bed._

"James Kirk, swallow your god damn pride," he says to no one, cringing when it occurs to him he sounds just like Bones.

He flips the sheets back then stands, padding across the room to his boxers. They're a navy bump in the dark and he smirks as he tugs them on, remembering the haste in which they'd been thrown to the shadowed corner. He considers it lucky they're in one piece, as Spock has destroyed more of his clothes than away missions have destroyed his golden uniform shirts.

He traces the thrum of their bond in his mind, finding Spock deep in thought and getting glimpses of fireflies dotting the old barn that can be seen from the porch of his childhood "home".

So he goes downstairs, dodging the old floorboards that squeal and croak under the pressure of toes. That knowledge had been useful for avoiding Frank as a kid.

He creeps through the kitchen, watching hard streaks of blue light catch on the knife handles and the glass of traditional non-holo photographs. The one of his Dad, dawning his Starfleet uniform and laughing as he lifts a four-year-old Sam in the air is expected, but the next frame makes him stop suddenly.

It's a picture of him and Spock at their bonding ceremony. Their first two fingers are touched together and Jim's grin is quite literally splitting his face in half, his eyes only upside down crescent scrunches, blooms of pink on his cheeks shining. He remembers that moment, remembers feeling like he was about to pass out from the heat and the layers of Vulcan ceremonial robes but being so overwhelmingly happy that he didn't care in the slightest. As a matter of fact, he nearly _did_ pass out during the precession to Sarek's right after that photo was taken. He was only saved by Spock's watchful arm around his waist and Bones' subtle hypospray.

His mom hadn't even been there. He had no idea she had a photo, let alone that she'd hung it up.

A strange feeling swirls in his gut. Jim shakes his head, rounding his fingers through his scalp and moving towards the porch.

He's about press a palm on the screen door when he hears Spock's voice, low and even. The moral correctness of eavesdropping is debated for all of a second before he vanishes under the veils of floral drapery, stepping close to the wall and muffling his breath in slow swings.

"It is not...It is not so much that I do not like you..."

And Jim listens.

...^_^...

The door closes with a quite slap, springing twice against its frame. Winona bids Spock goodnight with a watery smile and many "thanks you's".

Spock waits until her footsteps fade into the house before his closed lips spread upwards and he turns.

"Ashaya, I believe you are, as you would say, 'lurking'"

It takes Jim a moment to remember to breath. When he does, he rips from his hiding place and runs outside, the hinges on the door rattling this time as it slams shut.

Spock is unprepared prepared for the armful of bondmate that hurtles into him with all the force of an enthusiastic train. He blinks, finding the collision has sent them to floor and Jim is sprawled on top of him, his arms so tight around Spock's neck that if he were human he'd be sucking shallow breaths.

"Spock," Jim whispers, voice thick as it strains around the lump that's sewn the lining of his throat together. Splotches of water paint Spock's grey t-shirt with black patches where Jim's face is pressed against his chest.

"T'hy'la!" Spock says, startled when he feels Jim's tears bleed through the cotton and the skin beneath it dampen. He almost involuntarily locks his arms around Jim's back, running one hand gently along his ribs and cradling the base of his skull with the other, "What is wrong dear one?"

The fabric slides back and forth with a shake of Jim's head. He breathes again, pushing the bridge of his nose into the nook below Spock's collarbone then raising his head.

"Not wrong," Jim smiles and turns into the hand Spock has cupped around his cheek, touching the side of his lips to the warm thumb busily brushing away the water there, "I heard everything…I know you've gotten your fair share of 'thank you's' tonight, but fuck, Thank you Spock. I love you. So god damn much."

Spock arches up, kissing the soft slope of skin in the center of Jim's forehead.

"As I love you. And there is no need for thanks; I merely said what I believed to truthful. In fact, I'm glad you did not object to my perhaps uncomfortabley detailed analysis of your character."

Before Spock can put his head back down, Jim snags his lips on his own, trying to mash all good things skittering inside him into the brief twine of their tongues and the heightened mixing of their minds.

"I might have under normal circumstances, but that may have been the nicest thing anyone's ever said for me-or done. Don't think I didn't notice you very deliberately trying to bridge the gap between my mom and I. It was about as subtle as you "suggesting" we go visit her."

"My intent was for effectiveness. Subtlety was an unnecessary luxury. Your mother has made many mistakes, but she does love you. You are far too deserving of foundation family provides for me to allow it to be denied to you when obtaining it is a very real possibility. Even if your own stubbornness is partially responsible for its continued absence."

"You sent that picture of our bonding ceremony to her, didn't you?"

Spock's eyes light with poorly disguised self-satisfaction.

"Perhaps."

Jim's slow laugh joins the crickets as he rests his head on the Vulcan again. He takes a palm from where it's looped around Spock's neck, trailing it down his ribs to where the familiar heart beats.

_I've already got a family, you know, _Jim says through their link.

He sends flashes of memories, the bridge crew of the enterprise, Bones, and Spock, Spock, Spock.

_I know Ashaya, I simply dislike that you went so long without one._

Gratitude floods the bond.

_But I have one now._

Spock inhales against the streaks of yellow hair bent under neck, ducking his chin down to tap top of Jim's head.

_And you always shall._

* * *

_Thank you for reading kind ones. I hope you liked it! Reviewers? Well, you get Wales, Italian, and my undying love._


	2. All the Moons Between

Hello Humans and other intelligent life forms.

This is actually the companion piece to "Things the Crickets Know".

Summary: It's been along time since Winona's hugged her youngest son. It's been even longer since she let him know she wanted to. But after six years apart Jim, with Spock in tow, come to visit Riverside. With some of her stickier memories and a lesson from Spock, she just might make amends.

So this is mostly Winona angsting and Jim and Spock being adorable. All in all a better combo than it sounds. Like salt and caramel.

Damn now I'm hungry.

It was actually a lot of fun to write, and my hopes are that it's just as much fun to read.

* * *

All the Moons Between

On the first night the hover cab skids silently on air as the stops in front of the old barn house.

Winona leaves the porch lights on so the gravel drive way is washed white, pebbles crumbling into black the further down the road they get. The inside of the house stays dark to let her press her face on the glass, a watching ghost, until she can move her feet to meet them at the steps.

Her breathes speeds as they approach, fogging the window. She cleans it with a squeak of a licked bathrobe sleeve in time to see her son shake himself awake and hand the cab driver a fist full of credits.

There's a happiness she doesn't think she's seen in him before as he bends down to something in his lap. A second later, a black head pops into her vision, the Vulcan (_her son-in-law, _she thinks with a swoop of her stomach) composed and straight backed even when yanked from sleep. Except he's not composed because he smiles at a disheveled Jim, actually smiles, closed lips drawing up in a neat but unmistakably warm line, then leaning forwards to meet Jim's.

It's a quick, but the practice intimacy in the slide of their mouths and the blinding grin Jim gives as he pulls away burns her in places she thought were ashen long ago, for reasons she's been trying not to think about for longer. Then Jim, her youngest, her _Jimmy_, who she knows was never really hers at all, who she hasn't seen in six years, who saved the world two times over looks up at the his childhood home.

His face falls, his eyes dim.

She wants to cry.

Spock sees him dampen too; the black slashes of his eyebrows lowering so there's a dip in skin between them. He says something she can't hear from all the walls she's placed between them and puts a hand on Jim's shoulder. Jim manages a weak smile and Spock kisses his temple before the door clangs open and they step out. Even she catches the crunch of the gravel, like flecks of bones beneath their feet, cutting into the hum of the crickets as they get their luggage.

She does go to greet them eventually. The hug she shares with Jim and "I missed you" whispered in his ear are stiffer than the joints in her figures that spent too many years bent around a PADD and not enough rubbing over the warmth of her son's back.

Spock hovers, a polite shadow. He somehow looks ready to step between them, while keeping his hands clasped behind his back and his expression a neutral mask.

Later, on the first night, she tiptoes around the louder floorboards to Jim's old bedroom, leaning an ear against the door where slices of paint are missing from the places "Do Not Enter" posters use to stick.

She's not sure how long she stands there, listening to the sway of their breath, the occasional twist of blankets and what sounds suspiciously like purring. But it's long enough to hear Jim make a sound strangled somewhere between a sob and a scream.

It's a sound so like the one she heard when she's came home early from a mission to find a teenage Jim beaten to smears of black and purple. She didn't know until years later that it was at the hands of the man she married to care for him.

It's a sound so, so, like the one Jim had made when she tried to touch him after Tarsus.

The sound becomes hard gasps, quickly followed by murmurs in Vulcan, and deep hushed tones that dip in out of music like half a lullaby. Eventually, they quite again.

Winona leaves, walking back to her room with bloody palms where her nails split the creases.

She doesn't sleep that night.

…*...

On the second night she talks to Spock. No amount of sheep counted will help her now. They jump over the fence, one, two, three, then the fourth sheep turns back at her, with Fanks sweaty face. "Little bastard ran away, just like his brother" he says, "Good riddance."

She sees the Vulcan sitting on the porch through the bedroom window, and she's not sure why she goes down. Maybe it's to hear _something _of all those years of Jim's life she's missed. Maybe it's because she wants to know the man who can make her son smile like that, the way he did on the first night in the cab, the way he did in the photo of their bonding ceremony that had appeared in her inbox two years ago. Maybe she needs to find out why he stiffens when she gets within a foot of Jim.

Maybe she's trying to torture herself.

Whatever the reason, she goes.

The orange porch lights make a carnival with the night stain of blue shadows and white strips of moon already in his hair. He seems to see everything she doesn't want him too.

She ask him why he doesn't like her.

Then listens.

He calmly tell her that no- he doesn't not like her, he resents her. Resents her because he loves Jim, fiercely and absolutely, but her son, "his T'hy'la" he calls him struggles to believe that since so many things, so many people convinced him he shouldn't. Because of her.

Because of her.

It's been there, she always knew but

But she's a rush, a whirl, and sandstorm, a plain old mess inside when it hits her. All the mistakes crawl fast from their buried places, they gag in her lungs, run in her eyes.

It 's been along time since she's cried like that. But Spock folds a hand over her knee and it's hot and she starts to breath again.

She's ready, that night.

…*...

It's not the third night, but the third morning when she stands on the top step of the stairs, a ghost again. Only, she feels less dead this time, the tight curls of yarn on the carpet are warm as she grinds her heels against them. The sunlight makes diamond shaped stripes on the wall, on the peach puffs of her cheeks, on the canvas pockets of her button down.

She use to imagine sunbeams where golden spear-heads, stabbing at the darker things within her. They would make them bleed so when she found her reflection bent around brass doorknobs or sliver pots she'd have to look away and wish for rain.

She still thinks she's right, but on the third morning she realizes how much she missed knowing her blood still rushed.

As she stands on the top step, hair yellow in the sun, she watches Jim and Spock in the kitchen. Spock is leaning (very straightly of course) back on the counter top by the sink, a mug of tea cupped in his long white fingers. It's made of a grey clay coiled around itself, with vein like blue splotches spiraled along its smooth ridges. An Andorian monarch had given it her many years ago and it hadn't been doing much more than steadily gathering dust. Until now.

Jim stirs a third spoonful of sugar in his coffee lazily, humming as the spoon clinks on the round china walls of his mug, which reads "Riverside Elementary Chess Champion". He turns, lifting it in the air and jerking his hips to imaginary music as he approaches Spock.

Spock stops jiggling his tea bag in favor raising and eyebrow at him. Jim only grins broader and even more dopily than he was, tapping his coffee to Spock's tea, than bringing it to his lips.

His eyes flutter shut and he leans in, hand not on his drink resting between Spock's torso and wrist on the counter, their hips touching lightly. Jim shuffles so his chest is against the Vulcans and his cheek is smoothed into the groove below his ear.

Spock fails miserably at not smiling.

"Jim, you are aware coffee is not sufficient sustenance to jump start your metabolism or provide enough caloric intake to maintain a healthy energy level?"

"Mmmmhhhh," Jim mumbles into skin tweaked an almost green, tilting his head up so his lips cup the shell of a pointed ear, "I can think of something that will provide plenty of calories. It's a liquid too. A thick one though, I got a bit already in the shower this morning, but I think if I get another serving the sustenance will be more than _sufficient._"

Spock shivers almost unnoticeable, but he remains composed.

"I am not sure weather to be appalled by your attempts at sexual humor and your absurd belief in the nutritional properties of my semen or to be aroused by your ever persistent libido."

"Second one" Jim says as he nips the tip of the pointed ear, "definitely."

Winona is both touched and mortified at this point. Mostly mortified though.

She's lifted the tip of her slipper in a start at a walk to make her self known, if only to prevent listening to anymore details of her son's sex-life when Spock darts an arm backwards and expertly takes a muffin from the tray behind them without so much as looking at it.

"At the present moment I am inclined to find the former more appropriate," He thrust the muffin carefully into Jim's hand, daring him to challenge with a sideways twitch of his jaw.

"You're no fun Spock," Jim huffs but Winona can hear the smile in his voice as he peels a chunk of the breaded top off and snaps a bite of it.

"I believe you expressed a very different opinion in the shower only 50.3 minutes ago."

"Yeah, well I've changed my mind."

"I shall endeavor to convince you otherwise."

Spock's left hand is inching to a cluster of bananas a foot to the side while the right makes a slow spider crawl down Jim's spine. When his left pinkie brushes a blunt brown tip and his right index gets _very_ close to the end of Jim's back Winona knows she should stop hiding.

She knows Spock will have to persuade him to eat the banana, and she would prefer to never know his methods.

The scene she witnessed was light and fuzzed with happiness, but when she takes the first step down stairs she's oh so heavy again.

Her feet don't really leave the floor as she enters the kitchen. The soles of her slippers are worn and flat, so she lets herself glide along the ground. Maybe she's safer if she pretends she's flying. She was always flying when she ran and this way-

No. She's not running now.

She tells herself to let fear go, but as Jim's blue eyes, just like his fathers, meets hers, her pulse squeezes fast from her chest to her fingers to her head.

"Hi, mom."

She clears her throat, threads a dry lip under her tongue.

"I'm proud of you Jimmy. I always was."

Jim's wrist brushes Spock's knuckles as he puts the coffee and muffin down on the counter. He swallows.

She sees his Adam's apple bob once in his neck, the curved point of thin bone dragging down then up again. He comes to the spot where she's anchored herself, feet frozen in the black tile that looks like a spread of crushed stars.

He hugs her. Warm. Soft. She hugs him back.

It's easier than she thought it would be.

"I know."

…*...

Soon, she stops numbering nights.

* * *

Hi it's me again. You lot are lucky I'm not in the mood to ramble or I'd probably find some way to attempt bathroom humor and if you experienced any sort of positive emotional reaction to this fic you'd be too busy thinking about the browner and squishier substances in your toilet to remember it.

Anyways.

I love you just for reading, but if you review, my dog will love you too. Granted, he's a golden retriever and loves anything that scratches his ears for half a second, but the sentiment's the same. Thanks for reading!

-Sophia


End file.
